Critical thinking

[ujoni08]

Good article by Mary Logan over on resilience.org:

Rather long, but worth reading. I've extracted some useful bits below.

As our world views begin to shift, there will be a lot of discussion about critical thinking. Shifting world views expose flaws in people’s thinking, from the ways we protect our ideas, to inaccurate assumptions, and to the inferences that result. This is in part because fundamental assumptions of our society are beginning to show cracks. There are many descriptions of critical thinking, but most of them do not go far enough in describing the synthesis necessary in describing our global problems. Ecological, macroscopic, and systems-based critical thinking is necessary to ask the proper questions about our global problems. [...] Our education also focus on knowledge and its application, without challenging students to do the creative work of synthesis.

[We need to:]

•Gather complete information – more than one source
•
Understand and define terms (make others define terms, too)
•Question the methods by which results were derived
•Question the conclusion: do the facts support it? Is there evidence of bias? Remember correlation does not equal causation
•Uncover assumptions and biases
•Question the source of information
•Don’t expect all the answers
•Examine the big picture
•Look for multiple cause and effect
•Watch for thought stopping sensationalism
•Understand your own biases and values (Chiras, 2002)

[...] Dr. Rosling suggests that we can cut the emissions of the wealthy, and then move the poor people to the wealthy class through a leap of faith, or magic, or something. First of all, the idea that we can reduce emissions of the wealthy is arguable on many fronts. But that is not the main piece of faulty logic. The most interesting piece of magic here is that we can focus on emissions, and ignore the energy basis that creates the emissions. Yet the fossil fuel emissions are caused by way of the transformed, high-tech society that wealthy countries have built by using the majority of the world’s fossil fuels. The idea that we can focus on carbon and ignore energy basis is what is missing from the analysis. Our single-minded focus on the tailpipe and while completely ignoring the gas gauge is the most obtuse and deadly blind spot in the history of man. Just where is the energy for a high-tech society for 10 billion people going to come from?

[...] Scientists need holistic views to counteract the tendency to focus narrowly. We need generalists in addition to our specialists. And we need people who can look at our problems at a larger scale; Einstein said that we cannot solve problems from the same consciousness that created the problems. We must learn to see the world anew, from a larger scale to see a complete picture of the processes involved. Our tendency is to become anxious about problems, and to immediately fasten on potential solutions. This process creates an immediate narrowing of vision, through reductionism. The first step in learning to think macroscopically is to take a step back and look at the larger scale first, to understand the drivers of the smaller scale. The biggest driver is always energy.

Energy can unify and simplify the understanding of complex systems. Energy systems diagrams represent the passage of energy through systems at various scales. Energy is a part of all storages, and flows of energy are a part of all processes.

[...] Here are some assumptions that surround our current societal worldview. As we hit multiple limits, we have no choice but to begin to look at some of these perspectives that frame our world views. Ways of knowing and being that have worked for 200 years are beginning to fail as the system begins to descend. Which of these assumptions do you hold and why?

•Growth is good
•Energy is no object, but money is
•Money is an accurate representation of the value of resources and goods in society
•Renewables can replace fossil fuels because all energy is of equal quality
•Man exists separate from nature, and the economy can exist without the environment
•The stock market = societal health
•Markets are free, and they work, such that our free markets need to be left alone
•Advancements in technology are always something to strive for
•Technology is a replacement for fossil fuels
•Our empire can expand infinitely
•An all-of-the-above energy policy is best
•Our global systemic problem is carbon emissions
•Maintaining the trajectory we’re on is better than any alternative

In this era, developing a critical, skeptical mind is essential to understanding what is happening with the global changes that are occurring. Thinking about how you think can help give a framework for understanding the changes that are occurring.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013- ... ke-compost

[JohnB]

Which of these assumptions do you hold and why?

•Growth is good
•Energy is no object, but money is
•Money is an accurate representation of the value of resources and goods in society
•Renewables can replace fossil fuels because all energy is of equal quality
•Man exists separate from nature, and the economy can exist without the environment
•The stock market = societal health
•Markets are free, and they work, such that our free markets need to be left alone
•Advancements in technology are always something to strive for
•Technology is a replacement for fossil fuels
•Our empire can expand infinitely
•An all-of-the-above energy policy is best
•Our global systemic problem is carbon emissions
•Maintaining the trajectory we’re on is better than any alternative

None of them! Do I win anything?

[biffvernon]

Thee and me, John; it's a dead heat.

[Lord Beria3]

How about these critical assertions...

The welfare state is unsustainable in a era without growth
A massive de-complexification of the State needs to occur which will involve mass lay-offs and pay cuts

I suspect that these assertionswon't fit the mentality among some here though. Critical thinking, but only to a certain extent eh?!

[JohnB]

How about these critical assertions...

The welfare state is unsustainable in a era without growth
A massive de-complexification of the State needs to occur which will involve mass lay-offs and pay cuts

I suspect that these assertionswon't fit the mentality among some here though. Critical thinking, but only to a certain extent eh?!

The welfare state is unsustainable in its present form. So we need thinking that changes it to a different form.

[Little John]

How about these critical assertions...

The welfare state is unsustainable in a era without growth
A massive de-complexification of the State needs to occur which will involve mass lay-offs and pay cuts

I suspect that these assertionswon't fit the mentality among some here though. Critical thinking, but only to a certain extent eh?!

No, the welfare state is necessary in an era where the majority of people are pushed off the land/denied free and open access to all other primary means of production, forced into urban conurbations and so are consequently forced to make their living from working for those few who do control those resources. That being the case, the least the majority can expect is that when the owners of the means of production do not provide them with enough work, they can expect to be at least fed and housed since they literally do not have the means at their disposal to take care of those needs themselves.

You are probably deliberately and probably as a consequence of your ideological bias conflating state re-distribution of an otherwise iniquitous distribution of resources with state complexity. They are not the same thing. The state will, indeed, be required to undergo a process of de-complexification. That does not, however, require that re-distribution of resources needs to disappear alongside.

In an era of de-growth, the need for the state to tax those who own the means of production and then redistribute it to those who do not, is greater, not smaller than when growth is possible. If you don't agree and your view prevails, then the owners of the means of production had better start building some big fences and buying some large guns because the rest of us will be coming for them and theirs and there are a hell of a lot more of us than there are of them.

Your central delusion is in conceiving of the welfare state as some kind of cancerous, socialist aberration existing in the soft underbelly of the capitalist system. What you utterly fail to understand is that the welfare state is a direct and inevitable consequence of that system. Without it, capitalism would have destroyed itself long ago.

[peaceful_life]

How about these critical assertions...

The welfare state is unsustainable in a era without growth
A massive de-complexification of the State needs to occur which will involve mass lay-offs and pay cuts

I suspect that these assertionswon't fit the mentality among some here though. Critical thinking, but only to a certain extent eh?!

Again, which welfare state are you referring to?
Think about it, critically.

[kenneal - lagger]

There are historical connections between now and the time of the French Revolution. Before the French Revolution the French nation was going through a period of depression and there was a need for taxation to be spread more fairly. The rich refused to be taxed at all to pay for government spending and an untenable level of taxation was thus thrust upon the working people of France. Sound familiar? Hence they revolted, although that hasn't happened here yet!

As I've said elsewhere before, those running our business and the economy have forgotten that for the economy to run people need enough spare money to spend on stuff. Whether that stuff is cheap, mass produced, short lifed rubbish or expensive, high quality, long lasting, essentials is another question. People need jobs to provide this money to keep the economy ticking over. This provision would inevitably reduce the wages gap between bosses and workers.

What we don't need is the government to having to tax the means of production or those who own the production and then to redistribute it to those who do not. It is not something that will work in the long term. In the short term we need to tax those high earners who are currently lightly taxed to pay for the lack of investment in the productive economy by those rich people. If they start making less money because they are paying their staff more than just a living wage, it would be good if they were doing that in many cases, and employing more people their level of taxation would automatically reduce.

A Welfare State that has to provide for a small number of people and a Health Service for a large number of relatively healthy people is tenable but the opposite is not: especially when we have a recession. It is an untenable drag on the economy in its present form simply because of the extent of its use. We have to reduce its use both by reducing unnecessary use and necessary use. the former is reduced by increasing safeguards and the latter by increasing the availability of jobs and improving the nation's health. We do need a "nanny state" to an extent to keep people healthy to make the health service affordable.

By all means let people eat Kentucky Macburgers and drink Lemoncola if they want but tax the rubbish so that they can't afford to eat much of it. Tax it on salt, sugar, corn syrup and hydrogenated fat content if necessary but find a way of taxing it out of the every day affordability of anyone but the rich who can afford the private medical treatment required by long term consumption of this crap.

Our current corporatist economic model is not working and needs to be changed, not drastically but subtly and a bit at a time so that the boat is not rocked enough to sink it. I'm thinking of the housing price bubble especially here. Hundreds of thousands of sustainable jobs, well forty years worth, could be provided by a National Insulation Scheme and more could be provided by an increase in investment in housing for rent. These measures would save the nation money without increasing already unsustainable debt levels. The injection of printed, not borrowed, money into the economy could provide extra jobs in manufacturing to furnish those new houses and the extra cash flowing through the economy generally would stimulate that economy.

What we must avoid is more current account spending by the government over and above the level of taxation that can be gathered without placing a drag on the economy. Labour thought that they could boost employment by increasing non productive government based jobs. That experiment has been shown not to work. It places too much of a drag on the productive sector in the form of taxation and has been shown to be unsustainable.

While doing this we need to think about how the productive jobs that we are creating can be sustained in a period of reducing energy and resource availability. An increase in the labour content of food production would be a necessity as the number of fossil fuel calories input per unit of calorie production was reduced from the current five to ten to below one. Batch production of high quality long lasting goods with a higher labour and reused material content would also be necessary forced on us by resource depletion. More leisure time could result and of course the charging and paying of interest would have to be abolished.

A bit of a revolution then!!

[snow hope]

Interesting commentary Ken - plenty of which makes sense.

In summary, what a house of cards we have built. I really don't think it can stay up much longer.... system reset on the near horizon I would say. I hope I am wrong - I really, really do.

[Tarrel]

Interested in your thoughts on where the capital would come from Ken.

The current meme, from Howard Kunstler, Richard Heinberg and others, seems to be that many of the infrastructure projects needed to change our energy system and relocalise the economy will fail to get off the ground due to a shortage of capital. However, it strikes me that there is quite a lot of capital sloshing around at the moment as it flees from Government bonds and cash savings. Most of it seems to be feeding the growing Stock Market bubble.

In what ways, I wonder, could we attract some of this capital into the kind of investments you're talking about?

[peaceful_life]

Interested in your thoughts on where the capital would come from Ken.

The current meme, from Howard Kunstler, Richard Heinberg and others, seems to be that many of the infrastructure projects needed to change our energy system and relocalise the economy will fail to get off the ground due to a shortage of capital. However, it strikes me that there is quite a lot of capital sloshing around at the moment as it flees from Government bonds and cash savings. Most of it seems to be feeding the growing Stock Market bubble.

In what ways, I wonder, could we attract some of this capital into the kind of investments you're talking about?

Print it, I'm not being flippant either, just quantitatively ease for the common good.

[emordnilap]

Interested in your thoughts on where the capital would come from Ken.

The current meme, from Howard Kunstler, Richard Heinberg and others, seems to be that many of the infrastructure projects needed to change our energy system and relocalise the economy will fail to get off the ground due to a shortage of capital. However, it strikes me that there is quite a lot of capital sloshing around at the moment as it flees from Government bonds and cash savings. Most of it seems to be feeding the growing Stock Market bubble.

In what ways, I wonder, could we attract some of this capital into the kind of investments you're talking about?

Print it, I'm not being flippant either, just quantitatively ease for the common good.

We'd need a 180° turnaround in political power to do that. $85,000,000,000 in QE is being printed in the states every month but the only effect it's having on the real economy is inflated commodity prices.

[RenewableCandy]

I'm reading Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" atm. From his descriptions of ordinary people's daily lives, I jalouse things will have to get an awful lot worse here before there's anything like a revolution. People had literally nothing to lose: they were eating grass (when available) and women were going through menopause at 20. I didn't know that doit de seugneur only ended with the revolution and all: I'd always thought of it as a mediaeval thing.

[peaceful_life]

Interested in your thoughts on where the capital would come from Ken.

The current meme, from Howard Kunstler, Richard Heinberg and others, seems to be that many of the infrastructure projects needed to change our energy system and relocalise the economy will fail to get off the ground due to a shortage of capital. However, it strikes me that there is quite a lot of capital sloshing around at the moment as it flees from Government bonds and cash savings. Most of it seems to be feeding the growing Stock Market bubble.

In what ways, I wonder, could we attract some of this capital into the kind of investments you're talking about?

Print it, I'm not being flippant either, just quantitatively ease for the common good.

We'd need a 180° turnaround in political power to do that. $85,000,000,000 in QE is being printed in the states every month but the only effect it's having on the real economy is inflated commodity prices.

Oh, I know it would take some will, yes, but we're not talking about bending the laws of physics here, the figures can be selectively modified, shall we say.

[peaceful_life]

I'm reading Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" atm. From his descriptions of ordinary people's daily lives, I jalouse things will have to get an awful lot worse here before there's anything like a revolution. People had literally nothing to lose: they were eating grass (when available) and women were going through menopause at 20. I didn't know that doit de seugneur only ended with the revolution and all: I'd always thought of it as a mediaeval thing.

Agreed, but peoples perceptions of having nothing are vastly different from then.